The lessons learned by one brand new marketer on a mission.

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The product Ajax presents is pretty straightforward: powerful good soap.

As such, I thought their ad should be similarly direct. The background is some post-rain mud-stuff that collects in the low, poorly drained spot outside the library on campus. It gives a gritty, grungy feel, allowing the soap to stand out and giving a message of what the product can handle.

The icons, designed in Adobe Illustrator, were an experiment of mine, and describe a few of the varied things that Ajax could handle. (Yes, faces. I have experience)

Overall, the message presented (as per the client’s request) emphasizes the versatility and power of the product in a way modern enough to keep up with competitors.

Design is not always my strongest suit, but experimentation and practice are key to getting better. With that end in mind, I’ve taken the currently fairly dull Apple iTunes logo and changed it completely.

iTunes already has an incredibly diverse user base, but the largest section of it is made up of youth ages 12-17, with a slight male bias, according to Nielsen NetRatings. This particular group is unlikely to respond to a logo change at all, so a logo redesign should be done with attracting another portion of the market as the main objective.

There should be a more dynamic, interesting, modern look and feel to the new logo, eliminating what appears to be old-fashioned or outdated about it. The blue in the current logo can likely be kept, as it appeals to the widest audience, but other design elements should be used or modified to create an energetic, professionally youthful appearance.

No. No, please. Put that thing away before you get us all killed. Or worse, expelled.

There are boatloads of logos, but only some of them stick around. There are clear reasons for this.

Logo design is different from many other types of design work in that it requires a knack for simplicity or even minimalism. While other designs may need to be simple at times, logos are almost universally so. That means things like drop shadows, gradients, and many other effects need to be avoided.

At the same time, however, they must be easily recognizable and distinct, a clear indication of your company’s presence whether seen at 1 square inch on a piece of stationary, or blown up to fit a skyscraper-sized banner.

Let’s check out some examples:

DC Comics has a solid example of a good logo. It is not the simplest design, but consider what it is used to portray. DC’s superheroes are most commonly of the super-powered, cosmic, tights-wearing variety (with only a few exceptions in the Justice League), with anti-heroes very few and far between. Their logo reflects their style: bold, direct, flashy and heroic. The shape of the oblong “star-swoosh” could suggest several heroic ideas, such as flight or saving the world.

Pinterest has a wonderfully simple, yet well-fitting logo. The “P” subtly resembles a pin, leaving the circle slightly as if it were pinned to something already. It is also styled in a handwritten way, suggesting the casual, informal nature of the photos and pins shared on the site. A powerful logo design, to be sure, but also permissive of the fun way that Pinterest is most commonly used.

Lotus Jewelry’s logo is rather beautiful, to begin. Elegance seems to be the key idea here, and the idea is communicated well by clear design elements such as the crescent under the Lotus flower design, giving the logo a more defined shape. The colors chosen, while they may not lend themselves to paperwork or letterhead, could be very effectively used for banners, advertisements, and business cards, due to the higher quality of printing used, and communicate the idea of precious metals (particularly gold).

I’ve loved Soundcloud’s logo since the first time I saw it. It is easily recognizable and unique, yet very simple, and even visually describes the name of the site. Soundcloud’s logo even has some connections to the site’s functional elements, specifically the music player itself, which shows a representation of the music in the form of a wave.

Last, we have a logo dinosaur. Ford’s logo has changed over the last century, but after the 1912 modifications, it has stayed relatively consistent. It is immediately recognizable at this point, having been a staple of the American automobile industry for over a century. The reasons for this are likely summed up in the following: Why would Ford need anything other than this? It displays the company name, and fits the established, traditional way that Ford presents itself. As with many famous, long-lasting logos, simplicity and clarity seem to be the traits that make a logo linger.

For Small White Mouse, our online campaign has taken on (perhaps more fully) the feel of a Small White Mouse Rebellion, sparked and led by the mouse featured in the video shown in class.

The tools used in the campaign are numerous.

For every $100 a customer spends on the website, they’ll be entered once in a drawing for tickets to the Vans Warp Tour. Smaller future prizes (such as merchandise, or discounts on specific accessories) can be used for less-committal forms of entering the drawing, such as sharing and liking our posts on Facebook, or registering for the site.

Winners can send us a picture of them at the festival that we will post on Instagram, letting them show off their experience and helping us to build a brand image of our company. (Think #SWMrebellion)

Facebook and Twitter will act as our central connecting hubs and advertising platforms for all our promotions and special events, with links to smallwhitemouse.com in every post.

On Spotify and Pandora, we plan to use a banner ad and an audio ad. The latter will mimic a song in the musical genre already being listened to, but will then be interrupted by the Small White Mouse, urging listeners to support the Rebellion and play “real music.”

We also plan to start a Small White Mouse station on these sites, featuring songs from the artists featured at Vans Warp Tour to help promote the drawing further.

Guitar picks, featuring the Small White Mouse logo on one side and a QR tag leading to the site’s home page on the other, will be distributed at concerts and other musical events. Performers could throw handfuls of them off the stage and into the audience, or we could airdrop them from gyro-copters.

The final element to the campaign is a live-streaming video feed of well-known or celebrity guitarists in our studio taking requests for cover songs by way of a built-in chatlog. This feed would be featured on the website’s homepage, encouraging visitors to participate by requesting songs while they browse and shop. Performance times would be announced through Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

These messages resonate with the baby-boomer/generation X audience by promoting the rock lifestyle of the higher-end performers we’re selling to through a message of real, true music.

The guitar picks are a tangible object that it would almost hurt to throw away, acting similarly to a well-made business card. The audience for Facebook and Twitter is vast and varied, allowing us to communicate through friends and family of the target demographic, as well as through direct online contact with them. Using Instagram allows people the gratification of showing the world their style, and paints Small White Mouse as a brand for the rebel rocker in all of us.

We will measure the effectiveness of the campaign, which centers on getting people to the Small White Mouse website by a variety of means, through a survey within the online checkout process. The survey will consist of a single question: “What led you to our website?” The answers will include Facebook or Twitter promotions, Instagram publicity, QR tags,

Also, they can easily become ongoing or repeating events that make Small White Mouse a staple part of the online music community.

Most social media activity will be to announce promotions and sales, as well as any special events such as the live-streaming performers. The style of promotion, in which more spending equals more entries into drawings to win tickets, promotes the purchase of higher-end merchandise, with those who buy actual guitars gaining many more entries than those who purchase only accessories. Sharing social media posts on your own wall could be used to enter drawings for lesser prizes, such as accessories or memorabilia.

The following links lead to the potential Instagram image styles, as well as ads on smallwhitemouse.com.

I wanted to try another beauty product campaign concept, taking the message away from the appearance, and moving it instead to the feel.

There is a saying among the successful that “If you look good, you will feel good.” Dove beauty products are indeed designed to make you look good, but rather than set any aesthetic standards whatsoever, this potential set of ads would focus on the way that Dove products can allow you to feel simply by using them.

This example focuses on human touch. I wanted it to look like a soft, tender caress feels. That’s why I softened the image (taken from Tianna Andrew’s photo blog), focused on the contact between the hands, and added a liquefied word along the woman’s arm. Check it out:

It’s an experiment. A concept like this would lend itself well to a more diversified campaign. Various elements of human touch, as well as other feelings that come from using Dove products, could be evoked as the messages behind these ads. Then, when it come times to buy, the selected audience (mostly women ages 22-40) will be able to remember and once again feel the message as they buy Dove products.

Social media is one of the newest, most customizable, and most readily received channels for advertising today. It is flexible, easily manageable and, when used correctly, potentially powerful.

As such, it behooves us to inspect a few case studies of advertising campaigns in the social medium known as Facebook.

First up: Food.

Blue Sugar Bakery

Blue Sugar takes a simple, but incredibly effective approach to their social media marketing. As they are advertising food, the ads work best on the hungry, but the pictures are taken in such a way that even slight hunger can get the best of those who see them. At least, such has been my experience.

Whenever a new flavor of cupcake or other baked confection is completed, there is a Facebook post to publicize it and encourage locals to try it while they still have it in stock. When a large order or remarkable event cake is complete, a picture usually follows, showing the high-quality of the work done. On blessed days of divine intervention, a sale will occur, often due to a canceled order, and a Facebook post lets the town know.

Overall, they portray themselves in a friendly, transparent, professionally skilled way. And in the case of advertising cupcakes, simpler seems to be better.

Formal Education

This men’s clothing store has almost constant giveaways featured on their Facebook page. The way to enter is to like the post, with an added entry for sharing it also. Their giveaways are nothing paltry, either. The post featured above is one of their most common prizes, giving away a free grey suit.

The giveaways get our attention, but the rest of their page’s content keeps it. Formal Education frequently acquires new varieties of merchandise, and everything new is shown on Facebook.

The downside is that while many people like and share their posts for entry into the giveaways, that is sometimes all that they do. A deeper involvement to enter any sweepstakes (such as greater participation on their actual site) could influence potential customers to act, rather than simply appreciate.

The upside, however, is the powerful reach that Formal Education’s Facebook ads achieve through the liking and sharing required to enter any drawings or giveaways. Every time someone likes their post, that at least shows up in the smaller activity feed, and if they share it then the news feed is affected as well. This could lead to bombardment of the same ad to numerous people within the community, applying some key guerrilla marketing tactics. (whether or not guerrilla marketing actually works is another issue entirely)

Clif Bars

These delicious bars have an ad campaign that specifically targets the outdoor adventurer lifestyle (as you might expect). Clif sponsors a variety of outdoor events, and those feature prominently in their Facebook posts. Also included are developments like the one pictured above, in which Clif bars have gone international.

Of course their new products are posted often, but even more often (and perhaps more interesting) one will see publicity for Clif-sponsored events. Why should this be?

Because when people go to these events, they stock up on Clif bars at some point along the way. Also, it reinforces Clif as the niche brand for this specific market, becoming the ideal energizing snack food in the minds of the adventurers that frequent the posted events.

To me, the most fascinating part of Facebook ads is that I actually willingly opt in to have this publicity displayed to me whenever I log in to Facebook, simply by liking the page. When I follow a company, I actually expect and want them to send me these notifications and ads.

In my mind, that makes Facebook and other social media platforms some of the most effective areas advertising can be displayed in, because the audience is a willing one.

Dish soap has long appealed to one specific target audience: the housewife, or more recently the housewife on the go.

The problem with this is that brand loyalties run deep in women who have bought their own dish soap for much of their lives. It is difficult, if not impossible to convince a consumer of the validity of your product when, to be honest, the one they currently use works just as well.

In the interest of grabbing a mostly-unexplored corner on the market, I created an ad for Dawn that could market them like AXE or Old Spice have done with shower soaps. The idea is to show the virile masculinity and inherent manliness in doing something simple, like washing the dishes by hand.

I’ve not yet tried my hand at storyboarding in this project, but I’ll have to eventually.

Behold, the script:

The man himself is a great message alone of the simple, peaceful pastime of dishwashing, but the ad serves another purpose as well: rather than abandon the female market entirely, it encourages both men and women to work together, encouraging men to participate and women to buy this product in the hopes that they’ll get some more willing help.

Another feature of this ad is the ease by which it could be converted into a television campaign. By replacing the first subject with other kinds of manly fellows, in other household situations (such as cleaning the bathroom or taking care of facial blemishes)

So what do you think? Would Dawn, marketed like AXE, have an impact on the dish soap consumer market? Would men be into it?

I’m constantly discovering the impressive things done through visual media, particularly in the form of video ads, whether they’re meant for TV commercials or viral videos. Here are a few whose messages were particularly potent and applicable to their intended audiences.

1. TOSANDO Music

Do you speak Japanese? This ad for piano lessons will likely give you a lump in your throat either way. The message is communicated visually in such an effective way that the words the bride speaks don’t really matter. You know when she’s wondering what her father is up to, when she’s crying from pain and remorse, and when she’s silently encouraging and pleading with her father to finish the song.

2. Castrol Footkhana: Naymar Jr. vs. Ken Block

Cars trying to play soccer sounds like a good way to waste perfectly good soccer balls. Such is not the case here. There’s little or no dialogue in this whole viral ad, and Castrol is only showcased indirectly as being used in the car, but the attention-getting, memory-impacting power of this viral ad is in the eccentricity and celebrity endorsement of it. A car can apparently play goalie and forward, which comes as a surprise, and also crafts an image of Castrol users as absurdly capable drivers.

3. The Bible of Barbeque – Tramontina

This advertising idea comes straight from Brazilian barbeque experts to your…bookshelf. Everything (even the charcoal) that you need to make some excellent barbeque is included in this book, incorporated as pages. This video showcase of it effectively highlights all the most important pages, and shows the imagination and design skill that went into the book itself. There is some spoken script at the beginning, but the visuals, once again, speak for themselves. Unrelatedly, I’m now very hungry.

4. Turkish Airlines – Euroleague Epic Pool Dunk

Perhaps taking a hint from some of the more popular Vine videos, Turkish Airlines has decided to showcase a few of their (presumable) customers, by making one of the most epic pool dunk videos ever. While it is attention-grabbing, and somewhat memorable, it is a stretch to connect an airline with an epic pool dunk. Just the same, the image (and the message it portrays) is one of coordination and skill, as well as a certain professionalism and pride in one’s trade, which are all things an airlines wants to be associated with.

5. Nike Football – Winner Stays

Nike outdid themselves in this soccer-themed advertisement. This ad is meant to show the supposed lifestyle of Nike wearers, and ends up showcasing the quirks and oddities of soccer players as well. Young men playing the sport can identify with the dreams of soccer stardom, as well as the nuances of playing a pick-up game in the neighborhood. Ad to that a number of pop-culture references and an appearance by Nike spokesman Michael Jordan, and you have a golden ad for an 18-28 male audience.